Sunday, April 22, 2012

"Mad Men," Season 5, Episode 6, "Far Away Places"

As has
often been the case in “Mad Men,” gender is at the center of this week’s
episode, entitled “Far Away Places.”
Both Peggy and Megan are frustrated that the men in their lives don’t
want them to have a full role in the workplace. Meanwhile, the drug culture
makes an appearance as we watch a dinner party drop LSD.

Once
again, Peggy is more focused on her work than her personal life, a state of
affairs that doesn’t sit well with her left-wing boyfriend, Abe Drexler. Abe tells her that half the time she is not
interested in having sex and then simply goes through the motions of doing
it. After Peggy says she needs a little
time to rest after work, Drexler retorts, “You sound like my dad!” While Abe works for the Village Voice and is often the house radical on the show, his
attitude reminds us that the New Left of the 1960s drew the line at sexual equality. In fact, second wave feminism grew out of the
protests of women in the civil rights and antiwar movements who were upset
about their exclusion from important decisions.

After an
unsuccessful presentation, Peggy gets aggressive with the Heinz representative
and he demands she be taken off the account.
It seems likely he would have had a different response if Don or another
man had behaved in a similar fashion.
Speaking of Don, he continues to be indifferent to his work and demands
Megan leave with him for a trip to upstate New York, even though she was
supposed to help Peggy with the Heinz presentation. Megan is frustrated and tells Don, “You can
like to work but I can’t like to work.” After she doesn’t like the ice cream he
orders and refuses to get in the car with him, the couple fights as Megan declares,
”Get in the car. Eat ice cream. Leave
work. Take off your dress. Yes master!”
The last phrase is likely a reference to the hit television show “I
Dream of Jeannie,” (1965-70) where Barbara Eden’s genie routinely exclaimed,
“Yes master!” to the requests from Larry Hagman’s astronaut character. Reminiscent of his old battles with Betty, he
drives off, leaving Megan alone at a roadside Howard Johnsons.

Meanwhile,
Jane and (gasp) Roger go to a dinner at Dr. Timothy Leary’s apartment where
they “turn on” by dropping LSD. With his
philosophy of “turn on, tune in, drop out” Leary, who had a Ph.D. in psychology
from Berkeley, was a real-life advocate for experimenting with drugs. Though Roger is clearly affected by the LSD,
he still enjoys his usual drinking and smoking while on his acid trip as the
Beach Boys’ groundbreaking album, “Pet Sounds,” plays in the background. Written by lead singer Brian Wilson while under
the influence of LSD, “Pet Sounds” represented an important moment in the
evolution of rock n’ roll from the sanitized music of the early 1960s to the
more complex sounds of the latter part of the decade. Released in 1966, Wilson’s work provided some
of the inspiration for the Beatles recording of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band” the following year. The scene
again reveals Roger’s disengagement from the events of the time, as the camera
pans to Roger as Wilson sings, “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.”

In another
historical note, Michael Ginsberg reveals that he was adopted after he was born
in a concentration camp. The 1960s
witnessed a growing awareness of the Holocaust as anti-Semitism diminished and
American culture became more open to discussion of victimhood. Many historians believe the 1961 war crimes trial
of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, when many survivors first offered public testimony
about Nazi atrocities, served as a turning point. The Six-Day War of 1967, where Israel quickly
routed its Arab neighbors after weeks of rhetoric that the Jewish state would
be annihilated, brought the Holocaust further into public discourse.

The
episode ends with Bert Cooper reproaching Don for abdicating his
responsibilities and putting “a little girl” in charge, a condescending
reference to Peggy. Don then stands alone
in the conference room while the younger workers walk purposefully through the
hallway, another sign of the rising power of the youth culture as well as Don’s
diminishing importance.